A benefit of the government shutdown may be that it slows the stream of waste and bad behavior flowing from the federal bureaucracy. Catching up on my reading, I noticed these items in just the last few days of the Washington Post:
- To maximize their budgets over time, federal agencies drain their bank accounts on often wasteful items at the end of every fiscal year. The rule is “use it or lose it.”
- A high-level EPA official ripped-off taxpayers $900,000 over two decades, apparently duping administrators, supervisors, and auditors over many years.
- About $800,000 of federal unemployment insurance benefits were bilked by employed D.C. government workers.
- The availability of federal subsidies for dredging may induce Key West to destroy an area of unique coral and other sea life. Historically, the Army Corps of Engineers has been an environment-destruction machine, so residents should think twice before going that route.
- The Department of Commerce has kicked out the National Aquarium from its building after 80 years. There is no bad behavior here, just a sad story since the aquarium is an example of successful privatization. Federal funding was eliminated in 1982, and the aquarium was converted into a nonprofit corporation and supported by admission fees, donations, and volunteer efforts.
- The FHA is asking for a $1.7 billion taxpayer bailout.
- Environmentalists are concerned that grasslands and wetlands are being turned into farmland at a rapid pace across the northern prairies. This story mentions the effect of ethanol subsidies, but another cause of the change is the $30 billion of farm subsidies pumped out each year.
- The central figure in the IRS scandal, Lois Lerner, was finally pushed out. It is pretty obvious that a political and ideological agenda was at work in the targeting of conservative groups, but it has been very difficult to squeeze even an apology out of IRS officials and the Obama administration. Bart Simpson’s line “I didn’t do it” has long been the approach taken by government officials caught violating the public trust.
- A recent Washington Post article by Joe Davidson—the paper’s advocate for federal workers—was headlined “Shutdown Would Corrode Our View of Government.” I don’t think we need a shutdown for that.
